The Lyric Voice in English Theology

(Hardback)

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Elizabeth S. Dodd explores how the lyric voice in English theology has spoken to, within and between church, self and society. By examining a number of texts by authors such as Lancelot Andrewes, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as T.S. Elliot and Geoffrey Hill, Dodd concludes that lyric is a vehicle for the imagination; which is the engine of theological thought, but it also has practical, ethical and public implications. In contemporary discussions of genre in theological aesthetics, as in the work of Charles Taylor, David Ford, Ben Quash, Kevin Vanhoozer and Sam Wells, lyric is the poor relation to narrative and drama. Lyric is the voice of soliloquy, the language of emotion and spiritual experience, and is quickly identified with the solipsism and egoism of the modern individual. However, lyric has been a strong voice within English theology, and not only in a navel-gazing fostering of private spirituality. Through a comparative analysis of these lyric movements within English theology, this book reassesses the role of lyric in theological language, and suggests that it take its place alongside narrative and drama.

Reviews

Inspiring! Beth Dodd not only alerts us to profound and life-giving feeling, imagination, and wisdom in one English lyric voice after another, from the Latin and early English of the Middle Ages to the multicultural present; she herself also writes in an original, attractive, and challenging lyric voice that speaks both intimately and publicly into our present situation. Readers will find a feast of senses and sounds, from lullabies to hurricanes, and from visceral cries of jubilation, wonder and rage to the disciplined, musical formality of sonnets and liturgies. Dodd succeeds in combining rigorous academic study and cultural sensitivity with deep spirituality, and this major work confirms her as a leading contributor to the tradition within which she is at the same time both fully at home and prophetically perceptive. * David F. Ford OBE, University of Cambridge, UK *
Elizabeth Dodd's The Lyric Voice in English Theology, in its deep engagement with contemporary debates about the nature of the lyric and a richly diverse set of poetic texts, offers a much-needed reimagining of the role of lyric modes of thought in the ways we reflect, theologically, on such subjects as prayer, prophecy, difference, and suffering. Its call for a theology willing to follow our best poets into those spaces where the Spirit draws beauty out of discord, wholeness out of limits, and life out of brokenness and death is, in itself, an act of prophetic speech, beautifully rendered and deeply moving. * Thomas Gardner, Virginia Tech, USA *
This book on the lyric voice in English theology is a remarkable and rich tour de force celebrating the theological heart of the language and form of lyric poetry. Its theological wisdom transcends the impositions of theologians on the vibrant life of a poetic tradition that links Caedmon through the babble of lyric music with the poetry of the Caribbean, the seventeenth century poet Mary Carey, John Donne and George Herbert, and the romantics Blake and Clare, with Geoffrey Hill and the contemporary poetry of Gillian Allnutt and Warsan Shire. If lyric poetry is a gathering of fragments it is also a liturgical celebration of the music of words. This is a book of deep theological, liturgical and literary wisdom that demands, and deserves, careful study and patient reflection. * David Jasper, University of Glasgow, UK *

Author Bio

Elizabeth S. Dodd is MA Programme leader for the Ministry MA and Associate Programme Leader for the MS in Theology, Imagination and Culture at Sarum College, UK.